Threat Discourse Research Articles

ANTHROPOLOGICAL SPHERE OF HUMAN EXISTENCE: RESTRICTIONS ON HUMAN RIGHTS DURING PANDEMIC THREATS

Purpose. The article is aimed to study the anthropological, socio-philosophical and philosophical-legal dimensions of the ontological sphere of human life within the discourse of restricting human rights during pandemic threats. To do this, one should solve a number of tasks, among which are the following: 1) to explore the anthropological and praxeological understanding of fear as a primary component of human existence in a pandemic, which prevents people from changing their lives for the better and healthier, having fun and happiness; 2) to put a focus on the habituation of fear as a two-dimensional (short-term and long-term) adaptation to risks and threats from pandemics; 3) to reflect the anthropological features of changes in human life experience under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the discourse of human rights and public health measures. Theoretical basis. Today, international guiding principles on human rights response to global natural threats have been updated. However, there are still no specific legal recommendations (both at the international and national levels) concerning measures on human rights protection during outbreaks of various infectious diseases. However, the influence of unexpected global challenges (especially COVID-19 and not just that) causes a change in the anthropological component of society and the state, so it requires immediate comprehensive research. Originality. It was substantiated a systematic approach to the implementation of modern healthcare policy towards the recognition of human life as the highest value, increasing the level of psychological preparedness for pandemic challenges and approximation of statutory provisions of human rights protection to modern challenges and threats to the health of the individual, society and state. The study of anthropological, socio-philosophical and philosophical-legal dimensions of human existence in the discourse of pandemic threats made it possible to reveal the profound influence of fear on human life, social justice and, consequently, identify the moral and legal dependence of the development level of society and the state on the level of axiological and anthropological concept of human dignity. Conclusions. Based on the study of statistical reports, international analysis and the use of personal authorial methods, the following can be stated: the methods of combating the modern pandemic have directly affected everyone on national and international level. Their influence is significant because it changes the rules of coexistence and life of people in all spheres. However, the influence on the consciousness and other intentions of the individual has mostly temporally insignificant limits.

Narrative Framing and the United States’ Threat Construction of Rivals

Abstract Constructing a credible foreign threat is a key activity in the US national security community. By adopting a narrative approach to threat formation, we attempt to delineate the contours of the Soviet Union, Japan, and China in the US threat discourse spectrum. The Soviet threat is constructed through a story of two ideologically opposed rivals competing for world domination and the Japan-bashing narrative is of victimisation due to Japan’s unfair competition. China threat stories, however, are now more complex, conflating a story of US victimhood at the hands of China’s unfair competition, advocated by President Trump, with a widely embedded but malleable epic tale of power competition between a rising power and the ruling power, and a new Cold War script propagated by the 'deep state' hawks. We have found that as long as a country may potentially threaten the United States’ hegemonic identity, be it a formidable power with an antagonistic outlook like the Soviet Union, an ally from inside like Japan, or a rising peer competitor like China, the United States will invariably construct a diametrical self-other story in a zero-sum mindset and resort relentlessly to its superior Self while customising its threat story scripts in accordance with the rival’s characteristics and dimensions of challenges.

Shifting surface

This research explores how satellite images of Arctic sea ice contribute to climate change discourse. Different discourses require distinct responses. Policy measures are contingent upon representation, be it i.e. a threat or opportunity. The representations discussed are by the NSIDC and NASA, which hold a visual hegemony. First, the introduction discusses visual studies in policy research and identifies a simplified dichotomy of a threat discourse and environmental citizenship. Moreover, the methodology of visual discourse analysis based on poststructuralism is described. The delineated images portray a vertical, planar view allowing for spatial reference. Arctic sea ice is a visible climate change effect and the absence of boundaries, intervisuality with the Earthrise icon and focus on environmental effects support a discourse of citizenship.

Witnessing in a Time of Homeland Futurities

Current US rhetorical strategies of imagining a future of the homeland have led to the creation and utilisation of new technologies to contain and manage the border. These responses to the US border and immigration impact anti-trafficking efforts, sustaining a ‘homeland futurity’. Homeland futurity draws on and extends discourses of emergency that solidify borders as dangerous and risky. This article traces how homeland futurities emerged in US anti-trafficking efforts. Drawing upon interviews and focus group discussions with service providers and survivors of violence in San Francisco, the article demonstrates how migrant labourers are impacted by a discourse of threat and containment of the border. However, migrant labourers and their allies are innovating to secure a life that mitigates risk through migrant labourers’ use of technology. This article illustrates through the example of Contratados.org how technology may facilitate opportunities of future visioning by migrant labourers beyond a homeland futurity, to enact practices that bring to the centre migrants and their experiences through social networking and information sharing on job prospects.

Ethnocentrism, universalism, and refugees’ social rights: The Israeli perspective

This article is a pilot study in which we analyzed interviews with 16 inhabitants of the Tel Aviv area. We show that Israeli adults’ views of refugees are shaped by the political discourse of threat and otherness. Yet the findings also suggest that individuals may resist the prevailing discourse and advocate for refugees’ inclusion within Israeli society through the welfare regime. Thus, a gap is revealed between two perspectives that reflect current conflicting perceptions of social inclusion, the immigration regime, social rights in regard to African refugees and the character of current-day Israeli society.

Israel's ‘Narrow Waist’ and the Fate of Palestinian Localities in the Triangle Area Inside Israel

This paper challenges the veracity of Israel's discourse of threat revolving around its so-called ‘narrow waist’ area in the central part of the state – a discourse that has been sustained and repr...

From CNOOC to Huawei: securitization, the China threat, and critical infrastructure

ABSTRACTThis article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how China has been constructed as an existential threat by the United States. Specifically, it explores how US reactions to the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in 2005 created precedent for similar reactions to Huawei a decade later. It uses these case studies to demonstrate how the interplay between the China threat and security discourses of critical infrastructure has worked to successfully securitize China within broader American discourse. These examinations demonstrate a deliberate and protracted securitization of China by US elites, and they support more critical approaches to securitization theory that emphasize cumulative and incremental aspects over a securitized/de-securitized binary. Discourse analysis of key texts allows the reader to uncover how security issues are socially constructed, and discursive examinations of CNOOC and Huawei illustrate how concerns about national security are now employed in everyday American political discourse so that the China Threat Discourse has become the primary reading of China by US observers.

The Representation of External Threats: From the Middle Ages to the Modern World ed. by Eberhard Crailsheim and María Dolores Elizalde

Reviewed by: The Representation of External Threats: From the Middle Ages to the Modern World ed. by Eberhard Crailsheim and María Dolores Elizalde Alexandre Coello de la Rosa Eberhard Crailsheim and Marõa Dolores Elizalde, EDS. The Representation of External Threats: From the Middle Ages to the Modern World Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019. 466 pages. Today's world is convulsed by global environmental threats, cultural fundamentalism, the rise of right-wing extremism, migratory crises, not to mention the impoverishment of large sections of the global population, the loss of political rights, and more recently, the deadly new coronavirus disease. In this pessimistic context, Brill has published a lengthy, multi-author edited collection, which revolves around the sociological theory that representations of external threats have the potential to impact the internal cohesion of and strengthen the existing social order in the threatened communities. Starting from a research project initially focused on the Spanish-colonial Philippines, editors Eberhard Crailsheim, Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institute of History, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), in Madrid, Spain, and María Dolores Elizalde, a CSIC researcher as well, expand the focus of security studies and threats to other geographical areas and historical periods to conclude that "threats are part of our daily lives. . . . [and] shape our political and social behaviour and contribute to the features of our personalities" (2). To narrow the focus, this volume concentrates on external military threats to states and empires and their sovereignty claims (5). The contributors come from different disciplines, such as political science, philosophy, and history, but no anthropologists were invited to participate, which would certainly have enriched the epistemological analysis of violence. [End Page 111] The book has seven parts, which reflect the variety of topics about and approaches to external threats. Part 1 features chapters that theorize the representation of external threats. In the first one, Crailsheim approaches threat representations from conflict sociology and securitization theories, emphasizing Niklas Luhmnann's theories on communication as the constituting element of a social system. He sees external conflicts as factors that increase the internal cohesion of a social group. Public fears fuel "real" threats, thereby reducing humanity to fixed-action patterns of aggression. In his chapter on nineteenth-century pan-Slavism, Vladimir Belous uses a dialectical approach to the dichotomy of own/alien to argue that every external threat is fundamentally a cultural conflict (64). Part 2 analyzes threat communication in general. It opens with Theresia Raum's chapter that applies Crailsheim's threat communication to explain how the Byzantine emperor and his court in the seventh century gained support from large sections of the Roman population in the face of external military threats, specifically the Persians and Avars. Marie Shreier focuses on the Scottish colonization attempt in Panama at the end of the seventeenth century. Looking at the same period, Simon Kemper examines the discourse of threat among the sultans of Banten in western Java, demonstrating how Muslim elites eventually transformed the potential threats posed by the Dutch East India Company into a security issue (106–27). Part 3 focuses on internal "others" turned into minoritized scapegoats. It begins with Stephan Steiner's chapter on the depiction of Gypsies in the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian monarchy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. They were accused not only of misdemeanors but also of acts of espionage and treason (134–39), making them the scapegoat for the people's fear of the Ottomans. The fate of the Armenian merchants in the Moldavian Principality was not much better, according to Alexandr Osipian, who links their depiction as heretic suspects to their trade "in the lands of infidels"—the Ottoman Empire and the Crimean Khanate (161–62). Finally, Anna Balian's essay analyzes the different ways the Russian ruling class represented Jews as intellectual, economic, and racial threats from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century (186–202). Part 4 concentrates on threat communication and how Europeans constructed a perverse image of their enemies. Federico Niglia discusses the perception of "the German" as a threat to the rest of Europe from the end of the Middle Ages to the Second World War. This process of "enmification...

Referent object, securitising actors and the audience: the climate change threat and the securitisation of development in India

Climate change issue has evolved as a central policy of the Government of India. The crux of the policy is centered on the economic development. Internationally, India has been consistently resisting the developed country’s climate policy as the policy might threaten New Delhi’s economic development prospect. However, the recent evidence of climate change threat to the economic development compelled political leaders to design the domestic climate policy—the National Action Plan on Climate Change—which is consistent with the country’s economic development. Considering the global climate diplomacy, this paper examines the evolution of India’s domestic climate change-development discourse and how climate change has been constructed as a major threat at the highest political level that securitises the country’s economic development. The threat discourse is explained from the standpoint of the securitisation theory to explore three core constituents of India’s domestic climate policy: the referent object, securitising actors and the audience.

Dorosła „troska”, dziecięce „potrzeby”, społeczne sposoby zarządzania dziecięcą seksualnością

W przeważającej większości społeczeństw seks to praktyka przypisywana osobom dorosłym, jednak za stały obiekt społecznego niepokoju uznaje się płciowość dzieci. Analizy odnoszące się do dziecięcej seksualności wymagają czegoś więcej niż stwierdzenia obecności zróżnicowanych sposobów rozumienia tego, co służy najlepiej pojętemu interesowi dzieci. Przyjęłam za M. Stainton Rogers, że niezbędne jest tu eksplorowanie dyskursu, które pozwoli dociec, skąd się wzięły wartości fundujące konstrukcje dziecięcej płciowości. Punktem odniesienia dla tych eksploracji stał się kształtujący zachodnią politykę i praktykę społeczną dyskurs potrzeb. W jego ramach pojawiają się dążenia do identyfikacji podstawowych „potrzeb” dzieci i odnalezienia rozwiązań „problemów” wiążących się z realizacją tych „potrzeb”. W niniejszym tekście dyskurs potrzeb służy jako punkt wyjścia dla interpretacji historycznych oraz współczesnych sposobów „tworzenia” dziecięcej płciowości. W swoich rozważaniach zidentyfikowałam elementy dyskursu „potrzeb” i „problemów” dzieci wiążących się z płciowością. Nie pominęłam dyskursu nowych zagrożeń generowanych szczególnie w przestrzeni publicznej, w której funkcjonują dzieci. Następnie przyjrzałam się działaniom łączącym się z rozwiązaniem „problemów” dziecięcej seksualności (w tym praktykom ich normalizacji). Rozważaniom tym towarzyszyła analiza konstrukcji dzieci i ich seksualności, które znajdują się w centrum konkretnych „zagrożeń”. Odnosząc się do „potrzeb” i „problemów” dziecięcej płciowości, znaczenie nadałam również generowanym w odniesieniu do nich napięciom.

The Democratic Securitization of Climate Change in India

The concept of democratic securitization is an attempt to revise the theory of securitization. The theory has been widely criticized due to securitization theorists' predilection for undemocratic, elite‐driven, and illegal methods for addressing urgent threats. Such methods rely on the survival of an “issue,” including climate change. Discourses of threat and elite‐driven climate change policy are the accepted norms in the Indian political establishment, but such undemocratic processes and the exclusion of certain stakeholders in the policy processes are not appropriate for a democratic country like India. The alternative concept of democratic securitization of climate change policy seeks primarily to expand the concept of “audience” in the negotiation process in the climate change discourse in India. It also demonstrates how democratic engagement and the sharing of climate change knowledge can provide valuable insights into climate policy.

States simply do not care: The failure of international securitisation of drug control in Afghanistan

The link between the world drug problem and securitisation has been predominantly established to argue that an existential threat discourse reinforces the international prohibitionist regime and makes it harder for alternative policy models to arise. This analysis is problematic for three main reasons. Firstly, it overestimates the current strength of the international drug control regime as a normative and regulatory system that prescribes state behaviour. Secondly, the current international regime does not inhibit policy reforms. While the international treaty system proves resistant to change, it is at the national and local levels where new drug policies arise. Moreover, these are generally not the draconian or emergency measures that successful securitisation would predict. Thirdly, the analysis so far misinterprets criminalisation or militarisation as evidence of securitisation. As the case of Afghanistan shows, securitisation attempts, such as those linking the Taliban and the illicit opium economy, may have reinforced the militarisation of drug control in Afghanistan, but did not elevate the illicit drug economy as an external threat or a top priority. While there have been short-lived spikes of attention and provincial level campaigns to eradicate poppy cultivation, these have never translated into a sustained structural effort to combat illicit drugs in Afghanistan. Even the latest push for militarisation, the US-led campaign of airstrikes on drug processing laboratories since November 2017, represents more a shift in counter-insurgency strategy than successful securitisation. While Afghanistan’s illicit drug economy has been politicised for several reasons, states are not convinced that this economy somehow represents an existential threat to their survival.

The collective securitisation of cyberspace in the European Union

Reflecting a central premise of the collective securitisation model, it is argued in this article that both specific events and longer-term trends have galvanised and reinforced the EU discourse of increasing threat and risk around cybersecurity, at different points in time. Thus, whilst major cyberattacks have caused the EU to reflect with some urgency on the increasing threat and review its approach, new policy initiatives evolved incrementally thereafter, rather than being the product of any emergency action outside the EU’s normal politics. It is shown further that, in the case of cybersecurity, discourses of threat and risk have continued beyond policy initiation, and that this discourse has very much run in parallel with further action and initiatives. Finally, this article demonstrates how collective securitisation and legislation in certain key areas related to cybersecurity can also be subject to EU institutional desecuritisation moves, leading to national policy differentiation following a precipitating event.

Threats and burdens: Challenging scarcity-driven narratives of “overpopulation”

The faulty notion that population size is a fundamental driver of scarcity undergirds discourses of demographic trends as both threats and burdens. This claim of population-induced scarcity builds on well-worn “overpopulation” narratives which are often simplistic and repetitive: the finite planet and its natural resources cannot support the overly large and growing global population. In this article, we analyze three interrelated discourses that portray contemporary demographic trends as threats and burdens. The first two discourses surround young and aging populations. The predicted threat of volatile and fertile youth populations from the global South is juxtaposed to the supposed burden of a stagnant aging population in the North. Together, these two narratives are often used to warn of global power shifts from North to South and dangerous flows of people from South to North. The third discourse we consider draws on and extends these population fears into the realm of climate change and security where so-called climate refugees are perceived to threaten Northern borders while the poor communities they come from, especially in Africa, are portrayed as potential instigators of climate conflict and war. Demographic discourses of threat and burden impart negative values to these abstracted groups as “overpopulations” who consume too many resources, perpetuate scarcity, and increase uncertainty and risk now and into the future.

Rajan turvallistaminen ja poikkeustilan arjen geopolitiikka

In the autumn of 2015 more than 32 000 asylum-seekers arrived in Finland, most of them traveling through the Tornio border crossing point from Haparanda, Sweden. The situation was exceptional and as a response, the Finnish government relocated hundreds of security authorities and servicemen to register the asylumseekers and to control the border crossing. In the research literature such a border securitization, an approach where migrants and asylums are approached from the viewpoint of security instead of human rights, is considered problematic. This paper examines the local authorities and civic actors’ stories of border securitization and asylum reception in Tornio by employing everyday geopolitics as a theoretical and methodological framework. Everyday geopolitics approach is sensitive to the practices and experiences of border securitization at local and intimate scales. The main research finding is that local actors are aware of the wider geopolitical and societal discourses of threat. However, their stories of local and everyday practices emphasize feelings of safety, trust and cooperation at both national and supranational scales. Instead of focusing the feelings of safety merely on the discursive production of threat and danger, it is important to unfold the more contextual, local and mundane interpretations of border securitization.

“We mustn’t fool ourselves”

AbstractThe historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies throughfractal recursion. We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orbán’s RWP political persona or type.

Exploring and modeling the societal safety and societal security concepts – A systematic review, empirical study and key implications

This paper explores and models the concepts of societal safety and societal security in tandem, with the aim of understanding how the concepts are composed, related, and can be reconciled. The need for reconciliation can be seen in how the concepts address similar topics and issues in literature, which calls for an exploration of the concepts’ similarities and differences. The exploration offers both a systematic literature review of the societal safety and societal security concepts and the empirical analysis of how these concepts inform debate through in-depth interviews with leaders and key stakeholders in Norway. Data from the empirical study were analyzed by means of a systematic content analysis using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS). The combined insights of the literature review and the empirical study resulted in a model of the societal safety and societal security concepts that highlights the concepts’ multi-dimensional composition and closely related nature. The conceptual model represents an effort to reconcile the societal safety and societal security concepts. Associated implications to practice, policy, and research are discussed, along with the paper’s contributions to safety and security research. The paper’s theoretical contribution lies in its approach to conceptualizing and reconciling the interrelated and many-dimensioned nature of the societal safety and societal security concepts for further testing and extension. The methodological contribution is the explicit and systematic qualitative research design to facilitate transparency, structure, and insights in future explorations of safety and security concepts more broadly. While my findings coincide with much of the existing literature on what makes for good stakeholder involvement in discussions of societal safety and security, the paper offers new insights and dimensions for these concepts and further research. Two dimensions stand out. Firstly, threat discourses, defined by a societal elite and media, may enhance security measures and centralization tendencies that challenge democratic values such as the right to privacy and ability to influence the society’s political course. Secondly, societal safety and societal security are about creating favorable physical and psychological conditions for people to experience the good life when society is faced with new/unknown elements.

Multimodal strategies of emotional governance: a critical analysis of ‘nudge’ tactics in health policy

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the multimodal strategies used in social marketing to emotionally manipulate and persuade children and their parents to adopt healthier lifestyles. The UK government's anti-obesity ‘Change4Life’ campaign is an example of the increasing reliance on ‘nudge’ tactics in public policy. This approach seeks to develop a range of intervention strategies, inspired by behavioural psychology, in order to change people's behaviours without them necessarily recognising this has happened. I argue it is a form of governmentality which uses subtle semiotic techniques to secure voluntary compliance with policy goals. I bring the concepts of biopolitics and governmentality into dialogue with multimodal critical discourse analysis to examine how this is realised in a series of cartoon government adverts. Three intersecting strategies are identified: (1) the representation of (northern, working class) lifestyles as delinquent (2) a discourse of risk and threat mobilised through emotional manipulation and (3) a discourse of ‘smarter’ consumerism. The increasing popularity of nudge over the last decade coincides with a sustained programme of fiscal austerity which disproportionately penalises the poor, while food poverty and social inequality have increased. I argue that it helps legitimate and instantiate neoliberal political rationalities by privatising (both structurally and morally) responsibility for public health care. Despite the importance it places on communication strategies, critical scholarship on nudge has not yet investigated the linguistic techniques it uses in practice. This paper addresses that omission with a detailed multimodal analysis of the UK's longest running policy nudge.

Precarious residence: Indigenous housing and the right to the city

Drawing on findings from a study of Indigenous housing in a regional Western Australian city, this paper examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples as a particular set of ‘right bearers’ within the right-to-the-city discourse. In settler-states, colonial discourses of absence, threat, and authenticity have informed policy frameworks that have militated against various Indigenous claims of belonging, rights, and aspiration in relation to urban places. Housing has been a representative domain of struggle in this respect. Consequently, today, Indigenous peoples have disproportionately high rates of dependence on more volatile and discriminatory forms of tenure than their non-Indigenous counterparts.The paper examines the incongruence between State aspirations to move (Indigenous) people along a housing continuum in urban environments, and the actual experiences of Indigenous urban residents, which fix discursively on barriers to such movements. It also traces the deleterious, displacing impacts for urban Indigenous households of the retreat of the State in its role as a landlord for the socio-economically disadvantaged, and in responding to market signals and particular sociological theses regarding poverty, with specific spatial logics. In so doing, we advance two interwoven arguments. First, we assert that Indigenous people face a unique precarity in the Australian urban housing system, which is a result of both colonial and racially discriminatory forces, and economically discriminating processes such as capital concentration and the commodification of land. Second, we contend that this precarity sets many Indigenous people on housing career trajectories that are antithetical to policy intentions.

AFRICAN HUMAN MOBILITY REVIEW

On a recent visit to Washington DC, I had an animated discussion with a taxi driver who was an avid supporter of Donald Trump. The driver was not the stereotypical white, middle-aged, small-town, working-class, non-collegeeducated, angry voter who put Trump in the White House. Rather, he was a former television producer and poet from India who had immigrated to the US in the 1990s, and was adamant that Trump would stop the “flood of illegal aliens†into the country. His vigorous defence of Trump was a surprise, as was his buy-in to Trump’s anti-immigrant discourse of threat. There are few issues in the contemporary world that generate so much uninformed debate and misinformation as immigration (Blinder, 2015; de Haas, 2008; Hellwig and Sinno, 2017; Valentino et al., 2013).